Local SPC teams have busy week

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Suddenly the Episcopal, St. John’s, and Kinkaid baseball teams are as busy as they have been all season. And the games are bigger than they have been all year for each of them.

The rainy weather over the weekend forced teams to move some things up - like Kinkaid going to Austin Thursday to play St. Stephen’s and St. Andrew’s Episcopal instead of Friday as scheduled -- and some things to get pushed back - like Episcopal’s Saturday game at Houston Christian --and now everybody has a very busy few days in front of them.

And for a couple of them like Episcopal and Kinkaid, they can pretty much clinch spots this week in the upcoming Southwest Preparatory Conference tournaments with a good few days of play.

Episcopal and Kinkaid were each 3-0 in the Zone to start the week and those two teams - who have battled the last few years for the regular season Zone championship - are scheduled to meet 7 p.m. Friday night at Sanders Field on the campus of the Kinkaid school with the winner of that game taking a big step towards a possible SPC Zone championship as well as a one seed and first-round bye in the upcoming tournament.

Episcopal went to 3-0 in the Zone last Thursday night with an 8-4 doubling-up of archrival St. John’s on the Knights’ field. The Big Blue finished the game with nine hits and left eight men on as they basically had men on base and were threatening to score in each of the six innings they batted.

EHS’s pitching staff also held the Mavericks to just five hits in the game. But two of those hits were long balls as Grant Guillory and Joe Gobbilot each hit a home run for St. John’s.

The Knights were then scheduled to play Houston Christian Saturday afternoon but that game was moved to Tuesday because of the field conditions remaining after the weather. That postponed game means they will have three Zone games in four days this week as they will also be at John Cooper School Thursday night before going to Kinkaid on Friday.

After this week, head coach Matt Fox’s team only has one Zone game left on the schedule and that is next Saturday against St. Mary’s Hall so these four days will go a long way towards determining the Knights’ playoff standing in the SPC.

Kinkaid moved things up a day last week in anticipation of bad weather and it worked out well for head coach Steve Maas’s team as last Thursday they won a pair of tight games, first defeating St. Stephen’s 2-1 and then edging St. Andrew’s 3-1 to remain perfect in Zone play. Originally, the Falcons were to go to Austin on Friday, play a game, spend the night, and then come back Saturday and play again before returning to Houston. But with the forecast saying the whole trip could be a washout, the team went to Central Texas on Thursday to collect a pair of wins that kept them even with Episcopal at the top of the South Zone leaderboard.